Rodney

By David Hannay

This is an incredible account of the life and experiences of Admiral George Brydges Rodney. He was a British naval officer famous for his commands in the American War of Independence and his triumph over the French at the Battle of the Saintes in 1782. The key battles in which Rodney participated are covered accurately in this book. In addition, the writing style is unbiased and easy to understand. As a result, one can quickly grasp the intricacies of the battles and the contribution of the navy. Since the life of Rodney cannot be separated from the tumultuous period he lived in, this work also presents the history of that time. Contents include: Family and Early Career Service as Captain till 1752 Marriage, the Press-gang, and the Flag Flag Rank and Parliament Sixteen Years of Peace The Relief of Gibraltar The West Indies The Campaign of 1780 St. Eustatius Rodney's Stay in England To April 12th The Breaking of the Line The End

• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Jun 2, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547047940

Book preview

David Hannay

Rodney

EAN 8596547047940

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: [e-mail]

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I FAMILY AND EARLY CAREER

CHAPTER II SERVICE AS CAPTAIN TILL 1752

CHAPTER III MARRIAGE, THE PRESS-GANG, AND THE FLAG

CHAPTER IV FLAG RANK AND PARLIAMENT

CHAPTER V SIXTEEN YEARS OF PEACE

CHAPTER VI THE RELIEF OF GIBRALTAR

CHAPTER VII THE WEST INDIES

CHAPTER VIII THE CAMPAIGN OF 1780

CHAPTER IX ST. EUSTATIUS

CHAPTER X RODNEY’S STAY IN ENGLAND

CHAPTER XI TO APRIL 12TH

CHAPTER XII THE BREAKING OF THE LINE

CHAPTER XIII THE END

CHAPTER I

FAMILY AND EARLY CAREER

Table of Contents

George Brydges Rodney

, the most famous of the great generation of English admirals who raised the navy to the level at which Nelson found it, was by descent a Somersetshire man. The family was one of considerable antiquity—of more antiquity indeed than fame. From the reign of Henry the Third until far into the seventeenth century they were established as owners of land in and about Stoke Rodney, at the foot of the Mendips, in the valley of the Axe between Draycott and Wells. The history of the house was summed up by Sir Edward Rodeney, the last of them who held the family estate, in words which I do not presume to think I can better, and shall therefore quote.

Their faults whatsoever are not written in great letters, or become the subject of common fame, or the courts of justice; but as they lived without scandal, so they died without shame, going out of the world by the ordinary gate of sickness, and never by the hand of violence, some few excepted of ancient times, that died in the wars, and the late unfortunate gentleman, Sir George Rodeney, who fell by his own sword; and although civil dissentions, in the Barons Wars, did engage men in one side or the other, yet they for any I can find lived in a calm amidst these tempests, and were not entangled in the quarrels of the times. The reason of it may be that having a firm estate of their own, and able to subsist of themselves, they kept independent, living within their own orb, and mastering those affections of envy and ambition which commonly do but raise men for a greater fall. They had been always, from the time we first discover them, of the middle rank of subjects which is the most safe place—"Cives medii salvi sunt maxime," few or none of better estate, under the degree of Lords until the great flood of Church lands (whereof they possessed not one foot) improved many men’s fortunes to a great height; nay, which is strange, from Sir Richard Rodeney, who was borne under Henry the Third, to Sir George Rodeney in 42 of Elizabeth, the space of above four hundred years, they stood like Mare Mortuum and neither ebbed nor flowed in their fortunes; they were so provident not to lessen; but neither by marriages, which is the ordinary step of augmentation, nor by any other means did they make any addition, insomuch that at this day I give the coat single which my ancestors gave without quartering any other.

Here, adorned with the brocaded elegance proper to the time of the writer, is a summing up of the history of a solid English country family. Stoke Rodney lay out of the track of the great storms of English history, and its position helped the family to stand like Mare Mortuum for four hundred years. Still, a house which could live through all that happened in England between Henry the Third and Elizabeth without loss or gain, must have been of an equable temperament, free from great vices, follies, or qualities. The last stage was less peaceful, for Sir Edward Rodeney has to record money troubles and family disputes. He was himself a more stirring man than his ancestors had been. In his youth he fled abroad with Sir Edward Seymour, the husband of Arabella Stuart, afterwards Marquis of Hertford. His exile, however, was short. He returned, was married, not, as he complacently records, without splendour of ceremonial, to Mistress Frances Southwell, a lady of Queen Anna’s private chamber, in 1614, and spent the remainder of his life as a country gentleman in the west. In 1626 he was a deputy-lieutenant, and felt himself called upon to explain in his place in Parliament the excesses of the pressed men who were drawn into the west by Buckingham’s unlucky expeditions, and were treated as to pay and provend with that little care which Captain Dugald Dalgetty told the Marquis of Montrose might, according to custom, be bestowed on the common soldier. Sir Edward was a strong Royalist, and lived long enough to suffer for his royalism. Although he was otherwise a man much of the same kidney, he did not share the Baron of Bradwardine’s opinions as to the duty of keeping a family estate in the male line. His only son died before him, and he allowed Stoke Rodney to pass to his daughters. One of these ladies married into the family of Brydges of Kainsham, and thereby supplied a cousin of hers with a useful connection.

Sir Edward could have found male heirs had he so chosen, for he had three brothers: Henry, who was drowned on the coast of Africa; William, who does not concern us; and George. From this George came Anthony (the first of the family who spelt his name Rodney), Lieutenant-Colonel of Leigh’s regiment of horse, who served under Peterborough in Spain, and Henry. This Henry was the father of the Admiral. Having begun as a cornet of horse, he left the army and then was appointed, by the interest of his connection the Duke of Chandos, the representative of the Brydges of Kainsham, to a post in the Royal Yacht of George the First. Henry Rodney had a family of five children by his wife, Mary, daughter of Sir Henry Newton, Envoy-Extraordinary to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and afterwards Judge of the Admiralty, etc. etc. He naturally profited by his position for the good of his family. The King stood godfather to the second son, together with the Duke of Chandos, and the boy was christened George Brydges. It was for this reason, according to Major-General Mundy, the Admiral’s son-in-law and the editor of his correspondence, that the Christian name of George, which had been common in the Rodney family, was given to the boy who was to live to break the French line on August 12th, 1782.

This is the family account of the Admiral’s descent, and there is no reason to doubt its substantial accuracy. Sir Egerton Brydges, than whom no one was better entitled to insist on the delusions to which men are subject when their pedigrees are in question, does indeed utter a word of warning in his edition of Collins’ Peerage. He remarks with perfect truth that the slender notice taken of such branches [as this younger branch of the Rodneys to wit] in the Heralds’ Visitations, the long disuse of those visitations, together with the general confusion in which this kingdom was involved by the Civil War between King Charles and the Parliament, and the great destruction of family deeds and evidences which it occasioned, must render it extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible, for not only his lordship, but also most of the descendants from younger sons of the best families of the kingdom to join themselves to their old family stock. These are words of wisdom, and it is just possible that the Admiral did not really descend from the Rodneys of Rodney Stoke. Still there is good evidence to show that the claim was well founded. It was recognised by the Duke of Chandos when the Admiral had become famous, which is something; and, what is much more, it was allowed in his youth by George Brydges of Avington and Kainsham—a representative of the house into which Sir Edward Rodeney’s daughter had married. Sir Egerton Brydges has himself recorded that young Rodney was brought up and spent part of his early youth under the patronage of George Brydges of Avington and Kainsham, which confirms the presumption of his descent. We may therefore take it as reasonably well proved that the Count de Grasse, who by the way dated from the tenth century, was defeated and taken off Dominica by a gentleman of descent not greatly inferior to his own. It is just possible that the Admiral’s Christian names were given in compliment to the kinsman who patronised his early youth. Henry Rodney was at least fortunate in that he was able to so name his son as to give him a species of claim on his King, on one whom his King delighted to honour, and on a relation whose interest was well worth having. The boy started in life in the position of a gentleman with excellent connections.

Rodney was in all probability one of the many famous men who belong by birth to London. He was baptized on February 13th, 1718, at St. George’s-in-the-Fields, and it may be considered as certain that he was born in the January of the same year. His schooling, which cannot have been prolonged, was received at Harrow—then a grammar school of no especial fame. At the age of twelve he went to sea as a King’s-letter boy, being the last of those who entered the navy in that way.

The term King’s-letter boy requires some little explanation. Nothing distinguished our ancestors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from their descendants of to-day more completely than their indifference to formal regularity in the organisation of the public services, and their tolerance of anomalies. As for organisation, they were satisfied with as little of it as would serve the turn, and they endured anomalies with serene indifference as long as they were not intolerable in their practical results. They were not much addicted to giving their idea of an organisation, and when they did were inspired by the faith that if only the right men were got to fill places the good work would follow. The getting of good men, they held, was only possible by the strenuous application of patriotism, zeal for the King’s service, and intelligence on the part of those who had to select. Therefore they were content to allow a great freedom of choice to those in authority. The navy itself, though its efficiency was a matter of life and death to the nation, was contentedly left in a condition which on all modern principles should have had disastrous results. There was a central corps of commissioned officers—lieutenants, captains, and admirals. These men formed the permanent staff of the navy. Whether on active service or not, they were on the list, and drew pay. All others who were employed, warrant officers, petty officers, and men, were shipped as in the merchant service for the voyage. Their connection with the navy was limited to the ship on which they served, and terminated with the commission. Until some years after Rodney entered the navy the loss of a ship by wreck was held to terminate the engagement of all the crew. Their pay ceased, and with the pay their obligation to obey orders. It was not until it was found impossible to punish the men who so cruelly deserted Captain Cheape after the wreck of the Wager on Anson’s voyage that the modern practice was introduced of holding that the commission of the ship lasts till she has been formally paid off, and with it the liability of all hands to punishment by court-martial. Hence the apparent absurdity by which a captain may be dismissed from a vessel which has been at the bottom of the sea for months. If she were not regularly paid off, captain, officers, and men would continue to belong to her, and to draw their full pay so long as they lived. At all times, no doubt, there were warrant officers and seamen who served for life, and the dockyards had a permanent staff. None the less it was wholly the theory, and very much the practice, that when a ship was paid off, all who had been on board her except her captain and lieutenants ceased to be officially connected with the navy. So long as squadrons had to be fitted out it was convenient for the Admiralty to have warrant officers and seamen under its hand. So those who chose to engage again were commonly taken on; but there was no obligation to take them, nor were they bound to serve, unless they were pressed again.

From out of this body were chosen the lieutenants, and here the indifference of our ancestors to finish of organisation was very strongly shown. There were a number of regulations as to what qualified a man for a commission, but in practice the rule was that any one who had served a term of years at sea, of which some were in a king’s ship, who could hand, reef, and steer, could navigate a little and keep a log, who could find a friend to put in a word for him in the right quarter, was competent to receive a commission. If the friend could not be found then he might go on in the navy for life without ever, in Nelson’s phrase, getting his foot on the ladder. He might remain a midshipman, who was, and is, a warrant officer, till his death. Moreover, if he could not get a ship when his last had been paid off, the Admiralty did not recognise him. Men could be made lieutenants from before the mast, and there are cases of such promotions. A captain, as all readers of Marryat’s King’s Own will remember, could put boys on the quarter-deck. If at a later period he had the interest, he could obtain a commission for his client. There is a romantic story told about that Admiral Campbell who was Hawke’s flag-captain at Quiberon, which, as it illustrates the navy of Rodney’s time, may be told here. Campbell was the son of a Scotch minister, and was apprenticed to the skipper of a small trading craft in the west of Scotland. The vessel was overhauled by a king’s ship with a press warrant. The navy captain selected those of her crew who seemed best worth pressing. Among them was a newly-married man, who, overcome at the prospect of indefinite separation from his young wife, began to cry. Campbell knew that as an apprentice he was exempt from the press, but he knew also that the King’s service went over everything. If he chose to volunteer he could thereby break his indentures. Being a boy of a tender heart and a high spirit he resolved to save the husband if he could. He therefore went up to the naval officer and offered a bargain. He presented himself as a substitute for the sailor. The officer very sensibly took the offer, saying that he thought a spirited lad a good exchange for a blubbering man. Campbell made up his kit, and went to serve King George as powder monkey. But his spirit had pleased the naval captain, and after a time this gentleman put him on the quarter-deck, introduced him to good friends, who helped him to share in Anson’s famous voyage, and so to win his commission as lieutenant. Once on the ladder, Campbell rose by force of native faculty, and his power of making people believe in him. He lived to be at Hawke’s right hand at Quiberon, to become the friend of Keppel, and he died an admiral. Even if this story has been somewhat embellished, it shows what was thought possible in Rodney’s time, and illustrates what may fairly be called the elasticity of our old naval practice. No man could be a lieutenant who had not served the King; but he who had, whether it was as foremast-hand, master’s mate, midshipman, or captain’s servant (for young gentlemen were put on the quarter-deck under that title), and could be said to be competent, could in the old naval phrase be made, if he could induce an admiral in command of a squadron who had a vacancy, or the Admiralty at home, to make him.

This laxity, as it would be called now, had its bad side, no doubt. Mean men in mean times took advantage of it, and permitted themselves a good deal of favouritism and jobbery. But it had its good side too. A captain might pay his tailor’s bill by putting his tailor’s son on the quarter-deck; but he was much more likely to put his own son or nephew, or the son of an old comrade, there. In any case his own honour was concerned in the fitness of the lad whom he thus marked out as candidate for a lieutenant’s commission. An admiral might give his own incompetent offspring a commission or a ship. Marryat has preserved a wild legend about an admiral who did so, and then, when the youth made a fool of himself, inflicted paternal chastisement on him in the after cabin of the flag-ship—perhaps with a piece of inch-and-a-half with a Turk’s head on it. As a matter of sober fact, an admiral who knew how much his own honour and even safety depended on the fitness of his officers had every motive to select them well—when he had a chance to select them at all. At any rate the system, or no system, which allowed the rapid rise of Anson and Hawke, Saunders and Pocock, Rodney, the Hoods, Howe, Collingwood, and Nelson, can dare to be judged by its fruits. Could the most uniform organisation, the most careful avoidance of favouritism and jobbery, have done better for us?

Our fathers were at ease in their minds on the subject, for about 1730 they—and here we come back to the King’s-letter boy—saw the abolition of the only approach to an organisation by which a regular corps of candidates for a lieutenant’s commission had till then been provided; and they saw it with indifference. During the Restoration, and in the early part of the eighteenth century, it had been the custom to send a certain number of boys on board ship with a King’s Letter of Service. These lads were considered to have a better right to be made lieutenants than others. They answered, in fact, to the modern cadet. It does not seem that they were held to be entitled to a commission, but they were more likely to get it than another. As a Letter of Service would not be given except to those who had some interest, they probably did get their commissions as a rule. In this way some regular provision was made for the supply of a corps of officers. About 1730, however, the elder Byng, he who won the battle off Cape Passaro, being then a commissioner at the Admiralty, decided to abolish the King’s Letter, and to establish a naval school at Portsmouth in which boys might be trained for the sea service. This sounds very modern, but Byng carried out his reform in the genuine spirit of the eighteenth century. He did not declare that only those should become lieutenants who had passed through the naval school, and he did leave